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Chapter 2: LOG: OOLV NEUDA
Betrayal was a poison. If Tom could betray Ginny's trust and lure her into a trap, why not Luna? It was only logical to think so under the circumstances. It was only logical to leave the mystery alone. But if Ginny accepted the possibility of Luna betraying her, she didn't think she would be able to trust anyone else freely. Every stranger was potentially dangerous, every smile could be fake. Ginny knew where those thoughts led. And the idea of becoming the sort of person to doubt everyone, to always be on a lookout for another knife in the back, to forever be defined by Tom's shadow terrified Ginny more than the perspective of confronting whoever was responsible for Luna's disappearance.
She would find Luna. And if Luna truly was just a phantom created to lure Ginny into a trap, she would face it. But she would not believe it until she had undeniable proof.
She spent the rest of the day methodically tapping walls around the Astronomy classroom, trying to follow the common routes the students used to come here at first, then going through the passages she overlooked. The entrance failed to appear, and eventually Professor Sinistra invited her into her office—decorated with hundreds of butterflies pinned to the walls—and asked her what she was doing.
Ginny tried to explain the situation, but Professor forgot everything that was said, much like Headmaster, and so she made some excuse and left.
That night found her at the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room. There were no other leads for her to follow, she knew so little about what was going on. She hoped that she could find some traces of Luna's presence in the tower, some proof that she was there and some kind of clue about what to do next.
"What can change the nature of a man?" a bronze knocker in the form of an eagle asked, startling Ginny.
She stared at it for a moment. "Would you let me in if I answer?" she asked.
"Yes," the eagle said.
Ginny nodded. That did provide a solution to her current predicament. Coming there, she didn't really have a plan on how to enter. The whole day was surreal, and she acted because she had to act rather than because she knew what she was doing. Now, though, she had to stop and think for a moment, if only to answer the riddle. She smiled humorlessly, thinking about Tom once again, returning to her earlier thoughts on Luna and what her friendship meant to her.
"Betrayal," she said. The door opened. "So that was the correct answer..."
"I don't know," the eagle said. "I was curious what you'd say."
Ginny gave the eagle a nasty look before entering the room only to instantly jump back with a yelp of fear. Something was inside, something that didn't look quite human. Ginny, ready for trouble, prepared her wand and slowly walked ahead. Whatever it was that she saw, it undoubtedly noticed her, and she would prefer to face it rather than run.
When she saw what had scared her, she let out a nervous chuckle. Just a statue. The white of marble stood stark in contrast with blue curtains decorating the room which appeared almost black in the dim starlight falling from the enchanted ceiling.
Ginny lowered her wand, though she didn't put it away completely. It was impossible to say where the pure white eyes looked, but she couldn't shake the feeling that the statue was following her every move. She listened quietly for a few moments, glancing at the statue. Someone could have heard her. But the room was silent save for the soft whispers of books promising wisdom or entertainment. Ginny glared at them with annoyance. The library books knew better than to show their desperation to be read.
After a few more moments Ginny went to search for the second year girls' dormitory. The Ravenclaw common room was different from Gryffindor's, but the layout was similar enough for the search to be quick. As Ginny entered the dormitory and saw vaguely familiar girls sleeping in their beds oblivious to her presence, she felt guilty for being there. But she had gone too far to turn back now, so she tried not to think about it and focused on finding a bed that could belong to Luna.
Unsurprisingly, it was easy to find even in the faint light coming from the open door. The bed was richly decorated with complex geometrical figures cut out of parchment and stapled onto the curtains. Feathers formed a protective circle around the bed with a crow's skull watching over the room from the floor.
Ginny smiled a little. The implications of Luna's eccentricities had scared her the day before, but now she was glad to see them. Luna might be away, but she still had some presence in this world, there was some measure of reality to her existence. While it wasn't definite proof of Luna's nature, it did reassure Ginny just a bit.
With renewed sense of purpose, she walked towards the bed intent on discovering anything that could lead her to her friend.
She didn't have to search for long. Almost immediately her gaze settled on a crude picture painted on the wall above the bed. It was a simple image, the kind that any child draws at some point - three stick figures standing for parents and child, a square house behind them and the sun above.
Ginny leaned closer to read words inscribed below the painting, but couldn't see them in the dim light. Looking around nervously to check that the girls were still sleeping, she sat on the bed and drew the curtains closed. She whispered a spell then and spent a few moments blinking, trying to adjust to the conjured light. Finally, she could see the picture clearly. It was titled The Moon.
Ginny thought it was appropriate that the words were struck out. The orb on the painting was clearly the sun, not the moon, was with bright yellow color and beams falling down on the stick family.
She blinked, and the world changed.
Ginny found herself in a vast but bare room. The moonlight shone through bars on a window set far above Ginny's head, illuminating walls and floor padded with leather. The painting was still before Ginny's eyes, disrupted by the curve of the wall now. As Ginny looked around, she could see it was not the only one painting on the wall. To be precise, it was not the only iteration of The Moon painting there. The picture was painted over and over again, row upon row with even intervals between them. Each iteration was more detailed than the previous one, the stick figures resembling real humans more and more, though they never quite reached the point of true realism, stopping just short of it with disturbing results. The mother figure disappeared at some point, never to be drawn again, and the sun lost its colors, becoming pale grey of the walls.
Ginny didn't pay too much attention to it, distracted by screams and laughter coming from behind. She turned, wand thrust before her, and saw Luna crouched over another blonde girl wearing a straightjacket and sitting on the floor.
Ginny took a step back, pressing against the wall, as she saw the source of laughter. Faceless figures lesser than humans surrounded the girl in the straightjacket, pointed at her laughing, tagged at her hair and gave her an occasional push to which she showed no reaction. The figures were two-dimensional, but they didn't stand out like cardboard cutouts. The perspective was broken around them, the world grew smaller fitting their frame and adjusting to their nature, as if it was one of those tricky pictures that would turn into a room or a corner depending on how you looked at it. Whenever they stepped close to Luna, she would fall, one leg suddenly becoming longer or shorter depending on her perspective. She tried to ward them off the girl, but they paid her no heed.
For a few moments, Ginny just stood there, watching the scene unfolding before her. However, the light of her wand attracted Luna's attention.
"Ginny!" Luna screamed in recognition.
The sound of her voice snapped Ginny out of shock and she hurried towards her friend, being careful to avoid coming too close to the bizarre figures.
"Luna! What's going on? Where are we?"
"Please!" Luna shouted not paying attention to Ginny's words. "We have to help her! What they do, it's... it's..."
"It's what they do to you," the girl said. Ginny looked at her in shock for she recognized the voice. It belonged to Luna, though coming from the girl's lips it was wrong, broken, as if each word was said at different times with different intonation as if part of a different sentence. Her face, too, was that of Luna, with the exception of eyes being replaced by solid golden orbs blindly reflecting the light.
Luna froze at her words. "W-what?" she managed to say.
"I am you and you are me, we are one and the same." The girl smiled, but with her blind eyes unmoving, it was not a comforting sight. "Loony Luna. The weird girl playing with imaginary friends because she doesn't have real ones. Dragging around dead birds and speaking of silly conspiracies in a desperate bid for attention."
"Stop it," Luna whispered.
"Luna!" Ginny shouted trying to drag her away. "We have to go! We have to get out of here!"
But Luna stood still, her eyes transfixed on her doppelganger.
"Why should I stop?" the girl asked. "You've refused to face reality for so long, ever since Mom died."
"No..." Luna hugged herself, still crouching. She was visibly shaking.
"You crafted your own little world, free from real dangers, free from pain and death. For years you perfected it, trying to lose yourself."
"Luna! Come on! You don't have to listen to it!"
"But..." The girl's smile faded. "It didn't work. No matter how hard you try, they won't stop tormenting you. No matter how much you hide, the pain doesn't go away. The old and the new."
"Shut up!" Luna closed her eyes and shut her ears, screaming at the girl.
Ginny tried again to drag her away, but Luna fell on her knees, causing Ginny to fall, too. They probably wouldn't be able to walk far anyway. The figures were all around them, though now silent, still.
"This is who we are. This is what we are. Broken. Incomplete."
"I am not you!"
The girl laughed, a strange broken sound rising in volume then suddenly stopping and starting anew, over and over.
Luna screamed and went limp.
"Luna!" Ginny shouted, trying to support her weight and get away from the girl.
The laugh stopped as abruptly as it has started.
"This is not the world I desire," the girl proclaimed.
Her skin parted, revealing bloodied bones and organs expanding and turning into metal. The entrails turned into a rusty chain coiled around Luna's legs, dragging her into a cage forming from the ribs. Ginny held onto her friend with all her strength, but the chain twisted, hitting Ginny in the face and throwing her away from Luna who was dragged into the quickly forming cage, the girl's beating heart hanging above her.
"This is not the world I permit."
The metamorphosis continued, flesh and metal combining in grotesque ways, the cage expanding and forcing Ginny to crawl away so as not to be consumed by it. The heart lost its colors, becoming dirty white and starting to shine. Her perspective of the inside of the cage shifted, and Luna became a speck on the surface of a newly formed moon. The girl's skin became curtains drawn around the cage, leaving only the top of it exposed, allowing it to be seen only by the girl's head. Her neck was broken, fixed in place with metal poles in such a way that she could not look away from the sight below her. Her hands and legs split, bones, muscles and blood vessels becoming dark metal tendrils, each holding a mirror. The tendrils rotated around the cage, forming a complex configuration so each of them would contain a pair of empty golden orbs.
The end result somehow reminded Ginny of an old model of the Solar System she saw in Astronomy classroom, and she giggled at the thought. She was going to die here.
This world shouldn't be
Pale light shone from the cage, reflecting first in the golden orbs and then in dozens of mirrors, slowly spreading around the room. And what the light touched ceased to be. The two-dimensional figures were torn to shreds, letting the world snap back into its proper perspective only to be torn apart in a more permanent manner. Ginny screamed when she realized that two fingers on her left hand had disappeared. There had been no pain. There was no blood. Her skin was as smooth as if she had never had those fingers.
Desperately dodging the rays of light, she tried to get on her feet. The walls and floor around her crumbled, revealing nothingness outside. She knew that soon she would follow. Rising to her knees, she cast a random spell from her book, the first one she happened to remember. She couldn't recall its effect, but whatever it was, it didn't work on the abomination before her. Frantically jumping away from a net of light forming around her, she cast a few more spells. Two mirrors broke, one spawning a swarm of bees in the process, but the bees were quick to escape and other mirrors easily rearranged themselves to compensate for the missing two. More tendrils sprouted from the cage, completing the configuration again.
She ducked under yet another beam, falling to the floor and rolling away, trying to pay attention to the chasms opening around her. She succeeded at that, but as she was rising on her feet, a chasm opened underneath her, causing her to fall. The fall brought her wand in the path of another beam. Ginny looked in disbelief at a single unicorn hair severed in half.
Resisting despair to the last, she thrust the remnant of her wand in the direction of the abomination and whispered in the language of angels, praying to anyone who would listen to save her, to not let everything end like this.
Something listened.
Ginny screamed as she felt her blood boil, veins on her hands bulging and turning black. Something was inside of her and its desire to get out was stronger than her flesh. Her vision went black, but it wasn't just her fading consciousness. A grand figure of a two-headed dragon emerged in front of her, blocking the light. It exhaled, smoke twisting in the air in a form of snakes. Where they met the beams, light shattered, shining brightly for a moment before dissipating harmlessly. A young boy with a pair of broken white wings on his back was sitting on the dragon's back. The light reflected strangely from the pair, it reminded Ginny of oil paintings which became blurry when the characters in them moved, the paint slow to catch up.
The boy looked at her and suddenly Ginny's consciousness split to encompass two bodies. She was still her lying on the ground with the lump of a wand aimed now at the dragon, but she was also the boy riding the dragon. Surprisingly, there was little confusion. She knew what she had to do.
The dragon marched towards the abomination, exhaling a new cloud of smoke every few steps. Ginny followed a few steps behind. She tried to move fast, but it was difficult with more and more chasms opening around them, threatening to consume the procession and forcing them to search for a way around. As they drew closer, the light diagram became more and more tight, leaving little room for maneuver and bypassing the smoke cloud, taking away chunks of the dragon.
It mattered little. In the end the dragon reached the abomination and smashed the mirror configuration with its only remaining head. The abomination screamed as the dragon's teeth tore into its flesh. Metal tendrils extended from its main body, trying to strangle the dragon, but that just made the dragon struggle with that much more force, breaking the cage apart.
For a moment the moon shone brightly, freed from its restraints, and then the abomination was gone, her eyes not leaving the sight of the moon until the end.
The dragon and its rider, too, disappeared in a cloud of smoke which Ginny inhaled. She found herself back in one piece and fell on her knees, the last of her strength having left her body. She blacked out for a minute, then came back to her senses lying in Luna's lap, her injured hand held tightly.
Luna's doppelganger was standing above them, back in its human form, slowly drifting away on a disjoint platform as the last remnants of the room continued to fall apart, illuminated by moonlight with no source.
"Maybe you are right," Luna said with a shaking voice. "Maybe I did want to escape. Maybe I did reject reality for delusion. But there is more to it than what you say. There is more to me than you. My father is still with me. He loves me. He believes in things he tells me about, so I believe in them as well. Your very existence proves that there is more to the world than we know. Maybe they don't exist, maybe humans are just cruel and their minds are not clouded at all, but I won't know if I don't try to find out. And even if some people reject and mock me, there are bound to be those who will accept me as well." She squeezed Ginny's hand tighter still. "So, I guess I have to accept that things I believe in may not be real, but I won't reject them all right away. I... I'll figure it out as I go and see what fits the world I observe."
The doppelganger smiled and nodded, becoming part of the moonlight. A few pale sparks landed on Luna's hand, becoming a card which she clutched tightly and held close to her chest.
The room became nothing and for a moment Ginny was no more. She experienced being pure consciousness, an existence free of flesh, free of sensations and free of life. It scared her and in her fear she reached into her memories, trying to conjure an image of her world to replace the emptiness. She found herself back in Ravenclaw dormitory, unable to tell if she had returned to her world or created it from scratch.
Such existential thoughts were forgotten, however, when she saw Luna sitting beside her.
"Luna!" Ginny shouted, fiercely hugging her friend. "We... We're back! We've made it!"
Her shouts woke up other girls, one of whom clapped her hands to turn on the light, another came to Luna's bed and drew the curtains open.
"Luna!" she said after seeing Luna and Ginny. "You know it's against the rules!"
Ginny giggled, and the giggle turned into a slightly maniacal laugh at the words of the girl. The laugh stopped abruptly when she looked at Luna's face which turned an unhealthy bluish color. Luna was trembling and clearly had trouble breathing. She coughed violently as Ginny released her hug and withered leaves fell on the bed.
Ginny stared at them in horror for a moment, before turning to the assembling girls.
"Quick!" she shouted. "Get Madam Pomfrey!"
She spent the next three days in a haze. There were questions, of course, and she tried to provide truthful answers, but as before they slipped their minds almost immediately. Without Ginny's input, the Hogwarts staff conjured their own explanation and now thought it was a prank gone too far. Ginny hoped that perhaps this would result in the girls bullying Luna being punished or at least easing up on her, but she didn't have high hopes, for there was another aspect to forgetfulness she hadn't noticed earlier. Ginny had expected to be surrounded by her family, perhaps even being pulled away from Hogwarts to spend some time with her parents. And while she was annoyed at their doting over the summer, right now she would have welcomed it. To her surprise, however, nobody was really interested in talking about the incident. While people did not deny the evidence presented to them like Ginny's missing fingers, and plans were made to replace her wand, it felt as if those concerns were pushed to the back of their minds. Even when they talked about Ginny and Luna's treatment or other related matters, they would do so as if against their will and jump at any opportunity to change the subject.
Ginny felt as if a great curtain was closing around her, creating a boundary between her and the ones she loved.
She didn't regret her actions, however, especially now that she'd finally gotten a chance to visit Luna in the hospital wing. Seeing her sleeping with a soft smile on her face, Ginny knew what she did couldn't be wrong. Even though she'd paid a price for it, even though she still didn't know what was really going on, even though she suspected she would soon be entangled even further into this mystery, she could not imagine doing anything differently. Her first true friend was alive and well. She wasn't powerless anymore.
Ginny stood near the entrance to the hospital wing for a long moment, just basking in the peacefulness that she so rarely experienced lately. Then she quietly approached Luna. As her shadow fell on Luna, the latter stirred, waking up and slowly opening her eyes.
"Ginny," Luna greeted her with a smile.
"Hey," Ginny said. "How are you?"
"Fine. Madam Pomfrey said I will be released tomorrow. There were flowers in my lungs, but she was able to extract them all and repair the damage. And you?"
"I'll live," Ginny said, hiding her injured hand. The fingers were replaced with replicas that looked real, but they weren't animated. Magical prostheses were expensive, especially since her body apparently forgot how to control two missing fingers, so magic would have to do it for her. Ginny had asked for her new wand to be installed in place of one of the prostheses but was told it couldn't work like that. That was highly disappointing to her.
"Madam Pomfrey told me about your hand," Luna said. Apparently the gesture didn't escape her attention. "You can take my fingers if you want."
Ginny stared at her. Luna looked entirely sincere.
"Thanks, but you can keep them," Ginny said eventually.
Luna nodded. "About what happened... there..." she started to say hesitantly.
"Leave it," Ginny interrupted. "What happened... Well, I bet it gave you a lot to think about. It sure as hell did for me. What it was, what will happen next, what should we do, what does it all mean... And, honestly, I don't know. My thoughts started to run in circles, so I stopped wondering about all that." Ginny stepped closer to Luna and took her hand in her own, healthy one. "What I do know is that you are here now and I am here too, and that has to be enough for the moment. And if someone tries to challenge us, I'll kick their arse."
Luna smiled broadly at her. "Us against the world?"
"Meh, I can take them," Ginny said trying to ignore the black blot marking her hand.